


Standing Male, Nude

by kore_rising



Series: Shades of Gray [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-29
Updated: 2010-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kore_rising/pseuds/kore_rising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne walks in on Arthur masturbating. He doesn't notice so she stays to watch and is unable to get him out of her head afterwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standing Male, Nude

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: M  
> Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur  
> Notes/Warnings: Written for [this prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/5987.html?thread=8826723#t8826723) (re requested [here](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/8441.html?thread=14548985#t14548985)) at [](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/profile)[**inception_kink**](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/) : Ariadne walks in on Arthur masturbating. He doesn't notice so she stays to watch and is unable to get him out of her head afterwards.  
>  The characters, setting and story of Inception are the property of Christopher Nolan and no cash is being made from this story.

  
_Steam  
Not long ago so far, a lover and I  
in a room of steam -  
a sly, thirsty, silvery word - lay down,  
opposite ends, and vanished._   


  
_Quite recently, if one of us sat up,  
or stood, or stretched, naked,_   


  
_a nude pose in soft pencil  
behind tissue paper_   


  
_appeared, rubbed itself out, slow,  
with a smoky cloth._   


  
_Say a matter of months. This hand reaching  
through the steam_   


  
_to touch the real thing, shockingly there,  
not a ghost at all._   


  
Five weeks to inception

She hadn't meant to look.

Steam was unfurling from around the edges of the half open door. From behind it she could hear the steady beat of water from a shower head. She knew what she should do. Knock firmly, announce herself and let Arthur answer. But when she raised her hand to the wood her palm flattened, some rogue impulse tweaked her and she pushed. Just a little. Just enough so she could see. Just enough to satisfy her curiosity about the body under those tight, tailored lines.

He was naked. Beautifully, wonderfully naked, a man in his full glory, her thoughts noted appreciatively.  Arthur was braced against the tiles of the shower. His eyes were closed tightly and his head lolled, neck long and inviting, his hair splaying behind him. His skin was warmly pale against the harsh white of the walls. The definition of his musculature was eye widening, Ariadne admitted to herself, doubtless the result of a punishing regime to keep him strong and agile enough to defend himself and those around him. Her eyes travelled rapidly from his shoulders, down his chest, over a stomach that was dusted with a slender trail of downy dark hair, leading down to...

Oh. _Oh Good Lord_.

For one sickening moment, Ariadne thought she might giggle. What had they called in school, snorting teenagers clustered over porn magazines, faces screwed up in horrified fascination? Whacking off; Walking the dog; A hand job; A date with Madame Palm and her five lovely daughters; Master Bation; Wanking; the horrible old phrases spilled through her head, even as her heart sped up.

Her gaze couldn't seem to move from Arthur's hand where he was working himself, steady strokes up and down from the base to the tip. His hand was in sharp relief to the dark hair she could see in the apex of his thighs, each detail screaming out to her, imprinting themselves on her wide eyes.

And one above all. 

Peeking around the edges of his fingers was a border of yellow gold fabric, the black paisley swirling madly across it. The scarf she had misplaced two weeks ago, had turned her work space upside down to find.

Her scarf, wrapped around Arthur's cock as he pumped himself furiously.

And he was talking to himself, his voice low and rough against the cascade of water. " _Oh Ari, that's it_." He muttered, and ran his thumb over the head of his shaft. " _Like that, that's how you like it, isn't it_." He shivered and his other hand massaged his testicles. " _Harder, angel, harder._ " 

Her mouth went dry. He was thinking about _her_.

Not as The Architect, the coworker worthy of mutual respect, but as woman who he could pleasure and be pleased in return. A woman with lips, breasts, hips, legs and a sex that he could want and touch. Oh god, could that really be what lay underneath that cool, half smiling exterior? Was that all it would take, something as simple as her scent on a stray piece of soft fabric, to break in?

One hand strayed up to her chest and found the skin there burning with her own heat. She had to leave, she had to. It was wrong to stand here like a cheap voyeur watching this incredible display of lust while her body tingled and turned liquid. Getting off on Arthur getting off on thinking of getting her off in some closed loop of desire that they had only ever barely hinted at.

His hips rolled forwards and she could see the tension tightening the muscles in his stomach, his chest and his arms. " _Oh Ari; oh please Ari; oh, fuck me!_ " He panted in short, desperate bursts, his hand speeding up and gripping tighter, her scarf bunching around his hard on. His face twisted, a hot flush of blood colouring his skin from his thighs to his forehead. " _Please, Ari,_ " he kept saying, no, she amended, _begging_ ; as if he knew she was there, trembling in the doorway, his voice stretching the syllable to hard it might snap.

Suddenly he arched forward and the scent of sex was overpowering her. White fluid spattered his hand, his stomach, her scarf as he groaned his release into thin air. " _Oh yes_ ," he mumbled, smiling to himself, the last touches lazy and lingering, his free hand soft on his chest. " _Oh, Ariadne._ "

She tottered backwards, praying she wouldn't trip, hoping the steam would make her appear as nothing more than an apparition of swirling water droplets. Back, further, until her heels hit the door of the outer room, then she turned and ran. From her desk, from the workshop, from Arthur keening her name; past Cobb's frown, Eames' smirk and Yusuf's shock; through the crazy blur of Paris' streets, bright with people and trees;  All the way to her apartment where the bare walls showed projections of the things she had seen, over and over, no matter where she looked.

\---

Her vibrator was cold in her hand when she thrust it into her, hips pumping desperately against her bathroom wall. The electric hum poured through her as she pressed, fondled and stroked herself, pleading for a release she was dizzy for. 

In her mind's ear Arthur spoke, and she replied, babbling into the empty room while her shower crashed waterfall of white noise in the background.

" _Yes, oh god Arthur, it is. I will. Give it to me. I need it, I need you. Let me_."  
   
~*~  
  
Four weeks to inception

"Oh, Ariadne. That's _it_."

He said to himself, nodding in approval as he looked around.

(" _That's how you like it, isn't it?_ ") She felt the blush rising, hot and involuntary, spreading from her cheeks and onto her chest. "Thank you." She managed even though her tongue felt thick and stupid from the image suddenly replaying in pornographic detail her mind.

"It's perfect."  
They stood in the lobby of the hotel level, an empty echoing cavern of stone, glass and wood. Leather sofas clustered in groups and the warm gold of the lamps shone off every reflective surface. She had spent days refining it, hours spent pouring over his notes on how to make it feel _right_ and now they were under so Arthur could make his appraisal. 

"The fire access stair well has the Penrose steps you asked for." Her voice felt horribly high pitched in the space. "And each room has a safe. For the explosives you wanted to bring in." He turned to back to her and frowned.

"You look hot. Are you feeling unwell?"  
"No. No!"   
(" _Harder, angel, harder_ _!_ ")

"You don't look well. Come on, we're going back up." He pulled a gun from his under his jacket and cocked it. "You might be having a reaction to some of the new compounds and I don't want to risk you going into anaphylactic shock. I'll speak to Yusuf and see what might have caused it."

The barrel pressed to her temple and his gaze fixed on hers. "Close your eyes." He ordered, and behind her eyelids he sprawled, come running onto his hand:  _La petite mort,_ they used to call it. Orgasm, the tiny death. Like this one. ' _I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes..._ ' Her memory of high school Shakespeare supplied, unspooling the line unbidden; (" _Please, Ari; oh, fuck me!_ ") as the world vanished in an explosion of cordite, white light and heat.

\---

She ripped the needle out and half ran to the bathroom, pleading nausea. Behind her she heard Arthur chewing out Yusuf while the indignant chemist swore, over and over, upwards, downwards and sideways, that the compound was stable. 

She hoped that anyone hearing her half moans as her fingers dipped and circled; as she bit her lip and screwed up her face; as her breath pulled in to her in a gale of lust; she hoped they would simply mistake it for the shock of a little death.

~*~  
  
Three weeks to inception

"That's how you like it, isn't it?" 

She jumped, her pencil clattering to the floor and a wobbly grey line scoring over the watchtower she had been drawing.

Arthur was holding out a cup of coffee, his fingers curled around it in an all too familiar grip. Bubbles of milky foam peeked from the top."Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." His customary half smile tugged at his mouth. "Non fat latte with an extra shot of espresso, right?"  
(" _Harder, angel, harder_ _!_ ")

"Yes." She shook her head, "Right. Sorry." She reached out and took the cup with a slightly unsteady hand, causing some of the froth to spill onto Arthur's fingers. "Damn." He muttered, then brought them up to his lips. The white liquid pooled in the creases of his lips as he sucked it off, and she felt her mouth dropping open.

(" _Please, Ari; Oh, fuck me_!")

"Ariadne, are you sure you're alright?"   
Oh god, she'd been staring.

"Fine, I...I'm just tired." The lie fell off her lips too easily.  
"Look, go home for the night. There's nothing here you can't finish in the morning." He reached over and switched off the task lamp over her drawing board. "Go on. If you're still here in ten minutes I'll send Eames to get you and carry you home over his shoulder, OK?"   
"OK." She smiled back.

\---

In her bedroom, sat on her bed, she drank the still warm coffee. It was such a tender gesture, the first thing he had ever brought her, meant to offer her comfort while showing he knew, he had noticed, her. She sat the cup on her nightstand next to her bishop and thought about the way he had smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, as he held it out to her. 

Then, unable to bear it any longer, she sprawled over the quilt and brought herself off furiously through her jeans, thinking of the taste of hot milk on Arthur's fingertips.

~*~  
  
Two weeks to inception

"Harder, for god's sake, harder!"

The door slammed loudly in the empty space of the workshop, but Arthur's strained voice carried perfectly clearly over it.  "I said harder!" Ariadne felt her satchel drop by her feet, her fingers suddenly sweaty and limp. "If you can't do it properly there's no point, is there?" He was practically spitting the words out, urgent and rough in his dark voice.

"Bloody hell Arthur! If you don't want me to do it go to the fucking hospital and abuse them instead." She heard Eames reply.  The hospital?

"Cobb! Is that you?" She heard Arthur's voice rise, grating and impatient.  
"No," She managed, and cursed herself for sounding so pallid and shaky.  "It's me. Ariadne." She added then cringed at how pointless saying her own name was. How many other women were likely to be in the workshop?

"Get over here!" He barked.  
"Yes, please, come over here sweetheart and try to convince Arthur to let me do what I'm doing without being such a _massive arse_."

She crossed the floor nervously, trying not to think of steamy rooms, the pounding of running water and her scarf (" _Please, Ari; oh, fuck me_ _!_ ") For some reason she kept swallowing, clenching and unclenching her fists. (" _Oh Ari, that's it._ ") 

There, slumped in a chair in Yusuf's corner, was Arthur, his left arm in a sling. Eames was standing over him, looking annoyed. "What happened?" She managed in a slightly stronger voice.

"Arthur," Eames voice dripped with irritation, "has fallen down a flight of steps and dislocated his shoulder. _Again_."  
"Again?"  
"I first did it when I was a teenager. It's just a little weak, but it usually pops back in without any fuss. Except when Eames does it, apparently." He glowered.  
"Look, darling, if you want to find someone else who can put up with you ordering them around like Hawkeye _bleeding_ Pierce then you get them to do it."  
"Margaret," he muttered through clenched teeth.  
"What?"  
"Hawkeye wasn't the bossy one, it was Margaret Houlihan."  
"Oh, for crying out loud..." Eames closed his eyes and exhaled in annoyance. "Look, can you brace him while I do the deed? He keeps moving and it doesn't help at all." 

He looked at her, her hands still clenching and releasing at her sides, and put out a steadying hand. "Are you alright? If you're not good with this kind of thing I'll take misery guts here to the hospital instead. You don't have to do it." His grip on her arm tightened. "Ariadne? Ariadne!"

She shook herself and willed her hands to relax. "No, it's fine. Tell me what to do."

\---

She stood on his right  and turned his head into her abdomen. His breath was hot and short through her shirt as he pressed into her. She put one hand on his head and she could feel the sweat sheening on his too pale skin.

"Are you ready?" Eames had his hands around the injured joint. She nodded and Arthur yelled "Just do it will you!", the sound muffled in her ribs.

"One, two..."

He was suddenly shoved against into her body, the force nearly knocking her over even as she pushed back, gripping the chair with white knuckles. There was a sickening, dry, bone grinding pop and Arthur screamed " ** _Oh fuck_!** " into her, the words vibrating a thousand heated nerves.

"...three. There, done."

" _oh god, oh god, oh god..._ " He was panting into her skin, shaking and slumped against her. She moved her hand to soothe him and tried not to think about the last time she'd seen him like this. Suddenly the image of a white tile wall was bright and stubborn in her mind.

Eames gently tucked Arthur's arm back into the sling. "Are you sure you're alright, love?" He peered at her. "You've gone terribly pink."

Before she could answer, Arthur turned his head. "It's traditional to go on three, _asshole_." He snarled.

"You know me,  Arthur. Flouting convention wherever I go." He replied cheerfully. "Can you move it? No pins and needles?"  
"It's fine now." He sat up, leaning away from her so her hands dropped to her sides again. "Shit, I need some tylenol." He winced and rolled his shoulder experimentally. "Is there any in this rat hole?"

Before Eames could answer, she felt herself step backwards unsteadily and mumble, "I think...I need some air. No, I...left something at home. I have to go..."

Then she fled, Arthur's voice trailing her retreating back as he snapped at Eames: "Now look what you've done!" ( _"_ _Me? You're the one who's acting like a prick!"_ ) then called her name, over and over, until she was far enough away not to hear it any more.

\---

The alley behind the workshop wasn't terribly private, but she still came, two fingers stabbing at her clit in furious time. Her back arched on the dirty brick as she thought of heated, desperate pants of breath, sweating skin and the shape of the curses against her over sensitised flesh.

~*~  
  
One week to inception  
   
"Oh fuck Ariadne, please!"

Her fists curled into her sides reflexively, even though the only tone in Arthur's voice was irritation. ( _"Oh, Ari, that's it."_ )

"Be reasonable for just one minute, could you?" She shot back.

"I am being reasonable. There's no need for you to know how to handle a gun because I will be there."  
"You can't be watching my back the whole time Eames' is the subject. I'm not going to let you treat me like a child." He grabbed her forearm and closed the space between them, his face shut down tight in ferocious lines.  
"You are not and nor do I think of you..." he exhaled hard, as if he was reining himself in ( _"Harder, angel, harder."_ ) "...as a child."

"You saw what happened last time. I can't be that vulnerable again." The memory poured back in a flood of disjointed images, fists connecting with her face, bones snapping, pain coming in huge waves and blood red on the  white, white snow while Eames' yelled and explosions rocked the skyline. His eyes softened, perhaps understanding, perhaps remembering, perhaps, finally, empathising. His hand released her.

"OK, alright. I'll show you. But we start with hand to hand, then we move on to firearms, agreed?"

"Don't want me to accidentally blow your head off the first time out, huh?" She managed to smile, then the words sunk in and the blush was as hot as a fever. ( _"That's how you like it, isn't it?"_ )

"No. Plus it makes more sense that you learn to throw a punch before you fire a bullet. The skill is in having a hand steady, strong and accurate enough to deliver either." His hand, covering her scarf, that hand covered in his come; that hand delivering a knock out blow or curled around himself ( _"Oh, please, Ari; oh fuck me."_ ) Her eyes blinked out a staccato of images, not focusing on one but letting them rush over her as if they could wipe out everything else.

"Yes, I understand." She mumbled.

\---

The space he created for them to train in was plain, white walled. An awful choice, she thought, as hot beads of water seemed to pearl in the air without her realising. She clamped down hard on the image, refusing to recreate it here, where it could come so potently to life.

Arthur removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, then turned to her and said without preamble "Hit me."  
"Pardon?" She frowned up at his impassive face.  
"It's no good teaching you anything if I don't know what you can do already. Hit me."

She reluctantly made a fist, looked at him once, then flung her hand into space. The sound as he caught it neatly in his palm was dry smack. His fingers curled over hers as he lowered her hand, instantly too soft and too intimate a gesture in their current surroundings. He had never touched her for so long in life: She could feel herself heating under her clothes ( _"Oh Ari, that's it._ ") and nothing, no thought, seemed to stem the tide rising inside her.

"OK, one; you don't just hit and hope. Two, don't fully extend your arm. Three, aim past the target. Again."  
She squeezed her hand up tightly and muttered "Aim past the target..." (" _Harder, angel, harder."_ ) Her fist connected with flesh high on his chest with a hollow thump and she immediately gasped. "Oh my god, I'm sorry!"  Flattening her palm out over the false bruise and with a nauseating tilt she realised that's where his hand was resting when she saw...

"No, don't apologise. That was better." His breathing seemed to be less even than a moment before and she snatched her hand away quickly.

"Now, again."  
\---

By the end of the afternoon she could punch, block, almost throw and had been permitted to hold a hand gun. She wondered idly if Arthur was at all pleased with her, but squashed the emotion as fast as possible.

As they woke he simply said "You did well." Then gently tended to her wrist, bending over it with quiet dexterity, sealing the puncture wound with a cotton swab.  
But even this simple, necessary touch sent tiny shocks through her, every one pooling in her abdomen and coiling into a snarl of desire. She could smell his eau de cologne, linden blossom and leather; his head is close enough for her to lift it to her desperate lips and she felt like a baby, all damp mouth and impatient hunger. ( _"Please, Ari, oh fuck me."_ )

She waited for him to leave, pleading a few moments to gather herself. As soon as the door slammed behind him one hand ripped down her fly and she was back, in the shower, in the bright white practice room, she was overpowering him and it's enough, it's enough, _it's enough_.

She came, a shaking, quivering mess on a metal recliner; the hand he had tended so gently now damp with her own essence. 

~*~

Twenty four hours after inception

The knock on her hotel room door was short and firm.

Ariadne turned from the Los Angeles night spread out before her in a galaxy of neon on black, away from the thoughts of what she should do next (Paris? School? A life of mind crime? Would they still want her now all was said and done? Home, to her family and a life like everyone else's, quiet and bounded by Newtonian physics?) Her breath had clouded on the window, obscuring the world below into an indistinct smudge. It seemed too far away now, too unreal to ever be a place she could belong to again and stay sane.

She padded across the lush carpet, thicker than mud beneath her feet. "Who is it?"  
"Arthur."

The door opened noiselessly. "Did you check before you opened it?" He was crisp and sharp as a pencil line on white paper.  
"You said it was you."  
"Humour me. Next time, every time, check. There's a peep hole there for a reason."

"Did you want something other than to lecture me on personal safety?" She folded her arms and sighed. Not tonight, Arthur. Any other night than this. Not when my head is too full and I'm hanging by a thread over my future.

He put his hand in his pocket and there, a shout of colour in the bland hallway, was her scarf. The scarf. Neatly folded in his open palm. "I found this and I wanted to return it to you. You seemed pretty fond of it, so I thought..."  
   
She couldn't bring herself to touch it. He'd had it for all this time, he'd been using it to wrap around himself and think of her, every swirl speaking of the size and length of him curled in his hand with it caressing him into insensibility and, worse, she had known. If she took it, breezed "Oh, thanks!" And slammed the door that would be the end of it.  
But she couldn't.

"I saw you." She whispered to her scarf.  
"What?"  
"I...I saw you." She lifted her head and looked Arthur straight in the eye, damn the blush painting her face.  
"Doing what?"  
She felt hot and weak. "In the shower room at the workshop. I..." the world contracted drunkenly into his eyes, his outstretched hand, a golden square, "I watched you. With my scarf, you were..." Heat licked up her thighs, and there it was again, her private porno in 3D surround sound showing on the screen inside her mind.  
"Shit." He muttered. His free hand raked through his hair. "Shit, shit, shit."

"Look, it's OK." But even as she prepared him his out, her thoughts screamed back: ** _No, it isn't, it's not fucking_ OK** _(Harder, angel, harder!_ )  
She reached out and closed her hand over the soft material. "It's perfectly natural that we...," **_Yes, it's perfectly natural that I should not be able to get you out of my head_** _(Oh please, Ari, oh fuck me!_ )  
His fingers curled up reflexively against her touch, catching her in his palm. "... after working together so closely, might have some latent attraction."  
 ** _Water, falling, crashing down in a torrent_** _("Quick, give me a kiss_."; _"That's how you like it, isn't it?"_ ) ** _"_** _ **Yes, yes, it is. Oh please I need it, give it to me!"**_

"Is that what you really think?" Arthur's voice was almost too quiet for her to hear.

Sometimes, she realised, you can see the future. A millisecond before it happens, when you hang over the bifurcation of your life. Just as you prepare to plunge headlong down into the dark unknown, turning to cut the thread and go into free fall. When you know that this choice will somehow bind you, scare you, even as it alters and exhilarates you. Destiny opens his book, stills the flickering pages with his index finger and says: choose.

"No."  She tightened her hand over his, the scarf slippery between their skin, and she stepped back. His gaze didn't waver. He didn't resist or push. He just followed her. One foot behind the other she went, taking him with her, slowly, through her open door.

"Is it what you think?" She asked, hesitating on the threshold.

His free hand reached out, gripped the dark wood, then pushed it home with a quiet thunk. The bolt snapped into place and the room was so quiet she could hear herself breathing.

"No."

She took her scarf out of his hand and let it flutter to the floor. "You won't be needing this any more then."

There was no question of who stepped forward or who kissed first. They met in the middle, a gentle collision of mouths and hands and bodies. Mutual need meeting mutual need, unbuttoning and peeling away fabric with quiet desperation as too sensitive skin touched.  
When he took her hand and said "Bed" into her ear, she leads him to it without a question.  
When she finally saw him, naked and reaching out to her, she didn't hesitate.  
When he asked her, his voice straining around her name all too familiarly, "That's how you like it, isn't it? She could finally reply "Yes, Arthur. Yes, it is."  
And when they came, fever hot against each other, mouths absorbing each others words, hands pulling each other closer, she felt the world fall back into place. She knew where she belonged and what she had to do.

\---

The shower in her en suite was nicer than the one at the workshop or her apartment, a vision of shiny chrome, crystal clear glass and pale stone. She reached over and switched it on, carefully adjusting the temperature until clouds of steam started to form.

"Show me." She pressed the scarf into his hand.  
"What?"  
"What you've been doing when you were thinking of me. I want to see."  
He hesitated, bunching the scarf in his fingers. "Are you sure?"  
She nodded, and gently kissed him. "I want to see," she repeated, "I want to know."

He stepped up and carefully laid himself against the wall, folding the bright material into a neat rectangle.

"I would imagine that we had been somewhere, for dinner or a movie, and we'd got caught in the rain. You'd come with me back to my apartment, soaked to the skin and freezing cold, and I'd offer to let you wash and change to get warm again."

She watched as he carefully wrapped the scarf around himself and began to stroke lazily.

"You'd go into the bathroom and I'd hear the water running. I would know that then, at that moment, you were naked in my shower and all that was between us was a door. You'd be washing yourself with my soap and wash cloth, working all the way from your feet to your shoulders with slow, careful strokes, covered in tiny bubbles and white foam. That maybe you'd linger over your legs or your chest and perhaps be thinking of me while you did."

Ariadne couldn't tear her eyes away from him, from his eyes which were pinning her to the spot or his body which was becoming more aroused under his own touch.

"Then I'd hear you. A tiny little noise, a gasp or a moan maybe. I would tell myself you might have slipped or hurt yourself somehow and that you needed me, so I would go to the bathroom, open the door and I would see you through the steam. You would be gorgeous, so lovely that I would stop just to look at you, naked as the day you were born. And as I watched you, I would realise that you were moaning because you were touching yourself. That you were using the shower massage on yourself, bringing yourself to orgasm in my shower with my shower head and while you did it you were saying my name."

She whimpered. Oh god, was this what had been going on all this time in Arthur's head? That they had been thinking of each other thinking of each other to get off when they could just have reached out and quenched it with the flood of twinned desire?

"I would stop thinking that I shouldn't. That I mustn't. That we have to finish working on Fischer before I even kiss you, which I have been wanting to do since you first shoved past me to get away from the workshop. I stop thinking. I take off my clothes, watching you the whole time. Then I cross the room and step into the shower behind you. You jump when you feel my hands on your stomach and my body pressing into your back but I tell you it's alright, it's only me. I take the shower head from you and put it back so we're both standing under the spray. I can smell you and it's wonderful. I want to tell you all the ways I've admired, lusted after you, since we met, but you turn and look at me with your huge eyes, just like you are now, and kiss me before I can speak."

His free hand scratched across his chest as he spoke and his voice grew breathless as he carried on.

"I pick you up. You're so delicate when I hold you to me, do you know that? You're delicate even though I know you can beat seven shades of shit out of most of us with your voice alone. You're made of steel when you have to be, but for me you're soft and fine too, you trust me enough to let your guard down. I pick you up and you wrap yourself around me, I can feel how aroused you are and I want you so much that I don't wait. I press you up against the wall and I'm inside you so fast you gasp and dig your nails into my back."

He squeezed himself a couple of times almost reflexively, biting his lip before he continued.

"And I can't stop. Once I have you I want to take you. I know you want me too, because when I ask you " _That's how you like it, isn't it?_ " You say..."

"Yes, more, please." She answered, her voice feeling like it was going to crack.

"And I feel you tightening and relaxing around me, you feel so good, so warm and soft I can barely think straight except to say "" _Oh Ari, that's it_. _Harder, angel, harder._ " I know I'm going to come far sooner than I want to, but you're driving me crazy. I want to touch your entire body until I know every place that makes you wet. I want to talk dirty to you until you lose control. I want to do so many things, but being there with you makes me forget them all because you're with me now. You keep saying my name, over and over, and it's the most erotic thing I've ever heard, like you're running out of breath on the last syllable..."

 _It's enough_ : She stepped across the stone floor (the cement floor, the dark wood floor, all the floors they'd imagined between them), took one last step up and into the cubicle.  
"Come here." She demanded, reaching up and claiming his mouth. His hands left his body and found hers instead, roaming over her with an almost frightening hunger and the scarf dropping into a saffron puddle at their feet.

"Oh, please Ariadne..." He said into her neck, suckling on the pulse beneath her ear.  
"Oh please, Arthur..." She replied when her hands curled around his erection and carefully stroked him.  
"Oh please, Ariadne..." He sighed when her lips pursed around each of his nipples in turn, pulling each one into her mouth and freeing them with the merest graze of her teeth.  
"Oh please, Arthur..." She begged when he grabbed her backside, pulling their bodies flush with each other and squeezing hard.

"God, you have a nice ass."  
"Ditto." She laughed, copying his groping enthusiastically.  
"Aha. Ready?" He breathed into her ear.  
"Please," she repeated. In one neat movement he picked her up then turned them both around so her back was braced against the wall. She responded by wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders, fusing them together from hip to chest and grinding herself into him. "Now," she ordered roughly. "Inside me now, Arthur."

One of his hands strayed between them and she felt two of his long fingers slip into her, testing her almost. "Shit, you're so wet already." His thumb brushed over her clit and her hips pushed into him, eager and impatient. "How can you be so aroused when we've barely even started? If we keep going at it like this I won't be able to get out of bed, let alone walk." He grinned, a huge, genuine almost boyish grin, as his fingers kept up their maddening pace.  
"Don't worry, I'll keep you company." She managed before another shock of pleasure hit her, making her wriggle and curse. "For goodness sake, Arthur," she ground out, "You, inside me, now!"  
"I am, angel." He silenced her with a kiss that rendered her breathless. God, she almost hated that grin, those dark eyes fixed on her, those damp locks of hair falling in his face making him look almost feral and untamed. She could almost hate those fingers beckoning inside her, that thumb stroking her, the smell of them both like some kind of pheromone cocktail making her drunk with need.  
"Please," she heard herself beg (never in her life had she begged before, never, not for anything, but this.) "Please, Arthur; please."

He dragged his fingers from her slowly. "Who am I to refuse you, hmm?" His lips quirked into his more customary smile, then he carefully raised the two fingers he'd used on her to his lips, paused for a second to make sure he had her attention and put them into his mouth, sucking them like honeycomb. "You taste.." he added his thumb and she could see his tongue working across each digit before he released them "... _fucking_ incredible. I cannot wait to make you come with my mouth. With my tongue. I cannot wait to..."  
She growled and this time her kiss stopped his mouth. "Arthur," she whispered in a threatening tone when their lips parted and they were forehead to forehead, "if you don't fuck me right now I am getting out of this shower, going down the corridor and getting into bed with Eames. Understand?"

He shifted his hips and with one hard, urgent thrust filled her so hard, so suddenly, the air left her lungs and her back slammed into the wall behind her. "Never," he hissed "ever, even as a joke, mention having sex with Eames again. **_You are mine_**." He pulled back and thrust in again. " And _**I am yours**_. Understand?"  
She nodded, her voice knocked out of her. "Say you understand. Say 'Yes, Arthur. I am yours and you are mine.' Say it for me, Ariadne, say it for me." Her brain scrambled to make her tongue work around the sensations of skin on skin, him inside her, his mouth marking her neck while her hands scratched down his back. "Say it for me..." He begged this time, his breath rasping across her cheek.  
"I..." he thrust into her and back out, making her moan. " _ **I am yours**_ and you..." She was thrusting her hips into his now, desperately matching his rhythm "...you are..."  
"Say it!"  
" ** _You are mine_**." She grabbed his hips, urging him into her, the tension inside her almost unbearable.  "Fuck yes, Arthur, harder!" She half yelled hoarsely into the steamy air, no longer caring if she was heard, no longer caring that nice girls didn't or that she'd certainly never shouted mid lovemaking either. His mouth found hers, kisses wet and ferocious as he kept up a pace that grew more urgent, more erratic and suddenly, just as she felt herself start to tip into a brain melting orgasm, had him crushing her into the tiles, his skin burning and his breath gasping "Ari, oh, Ariadne..." into her hair.  
And as he went, hot and heavy inside and around her, she touched herself once and everything, every muscle, every nerve, every fibre tightened around him and let go in a blur of shuddering, breathless pleasure.

\---

"Come with me." He said quietly, the noise of the shower suddenly too loud as they stood, still joined and twisted into a knot of limbs, mouths and hair.  
"I thought I just did." She smiled lazily.  
"Smartass." He wapped her butt lightly but his face was happy. "No, I mean, when we leave here. Come with me."  
She felt a cold pit open in her stomach. "I can't. I need to finish my degree. It's taken me so long to get this far and I can't throw it all away. I have to go back." She let one hand cup his jaw. "Do you understand?"

"Ariadne," he shifted her higher in his grip so she was wrapped in his arms, his smile unwavering, "I'm going to Paris."  
"You're coming to Paris...?" She echoed and felt her brow crinkle in a frown.  
"I can work anywhere. Eames is sick of Mombasa..."  
"Eames is coming to Paris as well?"  
"Well, I think he just wants to be closer to London really." He knocked the shower off with his elbow. "Grab a towel, will you?" He kissed her cheek as he carefully got out of the shower.  "Yusuf wants to go back into field work, if you can believe that. I think the money helped just a little." She snagged a bath sheet and draped it around his shoulders, letting him tuck it around her too. "Cobb..." he sighed "Cobb might stay out for a while. But I know he'll probably want in again sometime. No one ever really stops dream work once they start." She pushed the door open and let him carry her into the bedroom.

"And me?" She pressed her nose into his cheek, the fragile hope daring to bloom under her ribs.  
"You?" He beamed and put her down on the bed. "Of course we need you. We're, to quote Eames," His voice dropped into a strange imitation of an English accent, "'Buggered with a teapot if she says no.' Which is his way of saying you've got it in you to be one of the best. Cobb thought so. And so do I."

"And you?" She looped her arms around his neck, pulling him down so they were face to face.  
"Me? Didn't I just say...?"  
"Don't be obtuse."

"Fine." He kissed her gently. "Come to Paris with me, Ariadne. Come and work with me, live with me, sleep on my sheets, drive my car, eat my food and drive me crazy in all senses of the word. After all," he pushed her back into the mattress and covered her body with his, "You're mine." She rolled her eyes at the grin he had on his face and laughed.  
"True. But you're mine too, don't forget that."  
"Trust me, I'm not going to." He dipped his head and nibbled her left clavicle, making her gasp quietly. "So, will you?"

Ariadne paused. The future shimmered in her mind like skyscrapers built on air, reflected back at her in a pair of coffee brown eyes. Not a safe future, not a certain one, not even the happy ever after one so many girls dreamed of, with white dresses and babies by the dozen; all the things that an adult might encourage a child to reach for. But the truth, she realised in a stomach lurching loop of excitement, is the world is so much odder, so much darker, so much crazier than even childish fantasy could make it. And at the same time so, so much better. What she was being offered was a world, a future, that was hers to make of it what she could.

She took a deep breath and smiled, and saw it reflected back to her.

"Yes."

  
~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> A/Ns: The title is a riff on the title of a Carol Ann Duffy poem, _Standing Female Nude_ (which appears in the collection of the same name _)_ about an artist's model posing naked.It includes a brilliant observation that sometimes the artist drawing the model is aroused by her nudity. And I liked the image for this.  
> The poem _Steam_ is also byCarol Ann Duffy and appears in another collection, _Mean Time_. I don't own the copyright for either work, but I'm not making any money from this, so what the heck.  
>  The Shakespeare Ariadne recalls is from _Much Ado About Nothing_ (V.i.99-101)  
> Benjamin ( _Hawkeye_ ) Pierce and Margaret ( _Hotlips_ ) Houlihan are characters from the TV series _M*A*S*H*_ , which is the property of Larry Gelbart and 20th Century Fox.  
> Destiny is one of Neil Gaiman's Endless from _The Sandman_ series.  
>  Ariadne's final thoughts are based on the incredible final words of Elton Pope from the Doctor Who episode _Love and Monsters_ (2.10), which I've modified slightly to fit her voice.  
> 


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